Mayor's lobbyist registry review motion will be voted on by council July 28

"If there's public money on the line and a private business entity is looking to influence city council or even a city administration decision, I believe that Calgarians have a right to to know that information," Farkas said.

Mayor Jeromy Farkas’s bid to create a database of which special interest groups are talking to Calgary city councillors passed its first hurdle on Tuesday. Council’s executive committee voted 10-1 in support of a technical review of Farkas’s notice of motion to establish a lobbyist registry, advancing the debate to council’s July 28 regular meeting for a final vote. Ward 10 Coun.

Andre Chabot provided the sole vote of opposition for the technical review, which is solely to determine if a motion is legally sound. Farkas’s motion, co-sponsored by Couns. Harrison Clark, Nathaniel Schmidt and Myke Atkinson, would direct the city’s chief administrative officer and ethics advisor to assess other Canadian cities that have implemented similar registries.

Their review would have to be completed by the end of this year and would look into best practices and estimated costs. It would outline council’s legal authority to establish a voluntary lobbyist registry and determine whether such a database should also apply to senior members of administration. Farkas said Calgary currently has no mechanism disclose local lobbying activity directed at elected officials or senior public servants, meaning external efforts to shape council’s decisions related to land use, procurement and policy can occur entirely outside of the public’s view.

Similar registries have been implemented in Canada’s largest cities, including Toronto, he added. “We have growing up to do as a city in terms of the accountability and governance measures,” Farkas told reporters. “And look, I believe that lobbying government officials, whether at the city or provincial or federal level, is a legitimate undertaking.

There are private business interests who have a stake in the decisions that are made every single day. But the balance needs to be with public scrutiny and the public good. “If there’s public money on the line and a private business entity is looking to influence city council or even a city administration decision, I believe that Calgarians have a right to to know that information.”

The motion comes as former members of Calgary’s city council remain involved in an ongoing corruption investigation. In March, the Alberta RCMP confirmed it was looking into allegations of corruption involving former Mayor Jyoti Gondek and former Ward 4 Coun. Sean Chu, and had seized their cell phones as part of a warrant.

Current Ward 10 Coun. Andre Chabot’s device was also seized. The investigation alleges that a developer consultant in Calgary — David White, who operates a company called CivicWorks — was offering campaign donations above the legal limit to council members who successfully tabled reconsideration motions for their clients’ failed land-use applications, according to an affidavit read aloud in a Calgary court last month.

The allegations, which stem from a reconsideration motion tabled by Chu at the July 15, 2025 public hearing meeting of council, have not been proven in court and no charges have been laid. Farkas said regardless of the investigation’s outcome, the public should have access to information about the efforts of special interest groups to influence municipal policy and decision-making. He denied the motion is in response to the investigation, as he campaigned on the idea in both 2025 and 2021.

“I’m not going to get into past events, but what I will say is why I campaigned on the lobbyist registry in the 2021 election was to better include Calgarians in the decisions that are being made,” Farkas said. “There are legitimate reasons for private business interests to want to influence decisions at city council, and that’s the decision-making process that we undertake every single day.” Atkinson, one of the motion’s co-sponsors, also said he doesn’t feel the proposal is related to the ongoing investigation.

“It wasn’t something that I was considering when I signed onto this,” he told reporters, adding trust in governance is one of the six focuses council approved for the upcoming budget cycle. “I think it is about councillors making sure we’re being held publicly accountable, and if our job is to make sure that we’re landing it with our constituents, (providing) the information that they need to to make an informed decision come election time.” Catch up with the day’s headlines, curated by our editors and delivered to your email inbox at lunchtime on every business day.

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